The Texas Rangers go to war with the Texas Cherokee.

Beginning in 1818, Cherokee led by Chief Philip Bowles moved to what is now eastern Texas as whites took over their homeland. Although Sam Houston, the first president of the Republic of Texas, promised the Texas Cherokee that they could stay in the region, his successor Mirabeau B. Lamar responds to pressure from Texas whites to remove Bowles’s people. Lamar offers to pay for their removal, but the Cherokee refuse to leave. The president then declares war “without mitigation and compassion” on the Indians.

Five hundred Texas Rangers march on the Cherokee’s village, mercilessly attacking the inhabitants and burning their houses and possessions. Among those killed are Chief Bowles, whose body is flayed and scalped. Some of the Cherokee, led by Bowles’s son John, try to flee to Mexico, but they are intercepted by soldiers. Most of the other survivors head north into Arkansas and eventually join their kin in Indian Territory.

The U. S. government dissolves the Seneca’s reservations.

By the terms of the Treaty of Buffalo Creek, the land of the four Seneca reservations in western New York State—Allegany, Buffalo Creek, Cattaraugus, and Tonawanda—is sold to the Ogden Land Company, and arrangements are made to force the Seneca to relocate to Kansas. Most Seneca oppose the treaty and accuse the leaders who signed it of taking bribes. The protests of tribe members and sympathetic whites will lead to the restoration of the Allegany and Cattaraugus Reservations in 1842. (See also entries for 1848 and for 1857.)

“The fact that the whites want our land imposes no obligation on us to sell it, nor does it hold forth an inducement to do so, unless it leads them to offer a price equal in value to us. We neither know nor feel any debt of gratitude which we owe to them, in consequence of their ‘loving kindness or tender mercies' toward us, that should cause us to make a sacrifice of our property or our interest, to their wonted avarice and which, like the mother of the horse leech, cries give, give, and is never sated.”

—Seneca Maris Bryant Pierce in a speech protesting tribal land sales

The Cherokee ask the United States to invalidate their Removal treaty.

Principal Cherokee chief John Ross (see entry for 1828) submits a petition to Congress requesting it to void the Treaty of New Echota (see entry for DECEMBER 29, 1835). In the treaty, a small pro-Removal faction of Cherokee agreed to cede the tribe’s eastern homeland for a tract in Indian Territory. Signed by more than 15,000 Cherokee, the petition maintains that the treaty is invalid. The government ignores the document and continues to make plans for the tribe’s removal.

The forced Removal of the Cherokee begins.

The Treaty of New Echota (see entry for DECEM BER 29, 1835) required the Cherokee to relocate to Indian Territory within two years. As the deadline passes, most of the Cherokee remain in the Southeast. Authorized to force them to move, U. S. troops storm their villages and destroy their crops, property, and homes. They also round up the Cherokee, placing them in concentration camps while the government makes arrangements for their relocation. In the camps, large numbers fall ill because of unsanitary conditions. That summer, under armed guard, the Cherokee are ordered to begin the long march to their new homeland. (See also entry for MARCH 1839.)